A00592 - Malick Sidibe, Photographer of Newly Independent Mali

Malick Sidibé, Photographer Known for Social Reportage in Mali, Dies at 80

“Regardez Moi,” a photograph of young Malians dancing by Malick Sidibé. He was the witness to the country’s youthquake.CreditMalick Sidibé/Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Malick Sidibé, whose black-and-white photographs of young partygoers captured the exuberance of newly independent Mali in the 1960s and ’70s and made him one of Africa’s most celebrated artists after his work was shown abroad in the 1990s, died on Thursday in Bamako, Mali. He was 80.

His son Karim Sidibé said the cause was complications of diabetes, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Sidibé started out taking pictures at weddings and christenings in the 1950s, using a Kodak Brownie camera, but after opening his own studio he branched out into a more ambitious form of social reporting. He attended Saturday-night parties at which young Malians, dressed to the nines, danced the twist, the rumba and the merengue to the Beatles, James Brown and Afro-Caribbean music. This was Mali’s youthquake, and Mr. Sidibé was its photographic witness.

“For me, photography is all about youth,” he told The Daily Telegraph of London in 2008. “It’s about a happy world full of joy, not some kid crying on a street corner or a sick person.”

His small-format photographs, surrounded by a brown tape border, were intended to be kept as souvenirs or sent as postcards. But after Western collectors discovered his work in the 1990s, they began presenting it, in enlarged sizes, in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. He quickly became, with the older Seydou Keita, Mali’s most famous photographer and an international star.

Mr. Sidibé was the first African to receive the Hasselblad Award, in 2003, and at the 2007 Venice Biennale he received the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, the first given to either a photographer or an African artist.

“He really changed the way Westerners look at Africa,” said Jack Shainman, whose Manhattan gallery currently has an exhibition of Mr. Sidibé’s work. (It runs through next Saturday.) “He captured the newfound freedom after colonialism — that time, and that moment,” he said.

Malick Sidibé was born in 1935 or 1936 in Soloba, a village in what was then French Sudan. He grew up in an extended family of 60 and herded sheep and cattle for his father.

He was chosen by the village chief to be the first child in his family to attend school, a white institution in Yanfolila, where he learned French. His skill at drawing with charcoal earned him a place at the Sudan School for Craftsmen (now the National Arts Institute), where he was trained as a jewelry maker.

A French expatriate photographer, Gérard Guillat-Guignard, hired Mr. Sidibé to decorate his combined studio and shop, Photo Service Boutique, and then took him on as an apprentice. While running the cash register and delivering photographs to customers, Mr. Sidibé closely observed Mr. Guillat and absorbed the fundamentals of photography.

Photo

“Taximan Avec Voiture,” by Mr. Sidibé. He was the first African to receive the Hasselblad Award.CreditMalick Sidibé/Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Before long, he started working commercially. “I did the African events, the photos of Africans, and he did the European events — the major balls, official events,” Mr. Sidibé told the photography website gwinzegal.com in 2008.

After going out on his own, he created Studio Malick in 1958, where he specialized in portrait photography with his own distinctive touch. He coaxed his subjects into more informal poses that gave his work a lively, vibrant quality. Tonally bold and beautifully composed, they often showed subjects glorying in a new possession — a sheep or a motorcycle — or showing off in modern clothes.

“Generally, women come to get photographed as soon as they have a new hairdo or purchase a trendy piece of jewelry: a bracelet, a necklace, a handbag,” Mr. Sidibé told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “For men, it’s when they buy a new bicycle or motorcycle.”

He found a rich subject in the parties and dances put on by social clubs with names like the Sputniks, the Black Socks and Las Vegas. On some nights, he would attend four parties, one after the other, photographing young Malians able, for the first time, to dance close together.

“At that time, young people were very motivated,” he told the French newspaper Libération in 1995. “Every Saturday night you had to dress elegantly. People would plan their outfits all week long. To make an impression, you had to be impeccable, with a trouser crease so sharp you could cut off the head of a chicken with it.”

He later produced a portrait series called “Vue de Dos,” which showed women with their backs turned to the camera.

In the early 1990s, when he had turned to camera repair work to earn a living, Mr. Sidibé was discovered by the photographer Françoise Huguier and by André Magnin, a curator who had been sent to West Africa by Jean Pigozzi, a French collector.

Mr. Magnin organized an exhibition of Mr. Sidibé’s work at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, and a coffee-table book appeared soon after. In 1999, Jeffrey Deitch showed Mr. Sidibé’s party photos in Manhattan in the show “The Clubs of Bamako.” A documentary about him, “Dolce Vita Africana,” was shown on British television in 2008.

He is survived by three wives and 17 children.

As he grew older, Mr. Sidibé stopped going to the parties, unable to blend in, but he remained sentimental about the era and the free and easy way that young Malians of all classes mingled on the dance floor.

“I loved the music and the atmosphere, but above all I loved the dancers,” he told The Telegraph. “The moments when young people dance and play as though the stars belong to them — that’s what I loved the most.”

Malick Sidibé (born 1935 or 1936 – April 14, 2016)[1][2] was a Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako.[1][3][4] During his life, Sidibé gained an international reputation and was considered, along with Seydou Keïta, Mali's most famous photographer.[5]

Sidibé was born in the village of Soloba, 300 km from Bamako, in Mali. From the age of five or six, he began herding animals and working the land. He became the first member of his family to attend school after he was chosen by the village chief to be sent to the white school in Yanfolila for an education.[5] During his first year he became interested in art and by high school, he was doing drawings for official events. It was his skill in charcoal drawings that drew much attention to his talent and led to his selection for the School of Sudanese Craftsmen (now the Institut National des Arts) in the capital city of Bamako.[5] While at this school, he was noticed by photographer Gérard Guillat-Guignardand, who became a mentor and from whom, through close observation and practice, Sidibé learned the craft of photography.[5]

In 1952 Sidibé moved to Bamako. In 1955, he undertook an apprenticeship at Guillat-Guignard's Photo Service Boutique, also known as Gégé la pellicule. In 1956 he bought his first camera, a Brownie Flash, and in 1957 became a full-time photographer, opening his own studio (Studio Malick) in Bamako in 1958. He specialized in documentary photography, focusing particularly on the youth culture of the Malian capital.[14] Sidibé took photographs at sport events, the beach, nightclubs, concerts, and even tagged along while the young men seduced girls.[3][7] He increasingly became noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. In the 1970s, Sidibé turned towards the making of studio portraits. His background in drawing became useful:

"As a rule, when I was working in the studio, I did a lot of the positioning. As I have a background in drawing, I was able to set up certain positions in my portraits. I didn't want my subjects to look like mummies. I would give them positions that brought something alive in them."[9]

Sidibé was discovered for an international audience thanks to the photographer Françoise Huguier, who worked with André Magnin, a curator who had been sent to West Africa by a French collector, Jean Pigozzi, in the 1990s.[5] One of the best known of Sidibé's works from that time is Nuit de Noel, Happy Club (Christmas Eve, Happy Club) (1963), depicting a smiling couple — the man in a suit, the woman in a Western party dress (but barefoot) and both dancing, presumably, to music.[14] And it was images like these that revealed how Sidibé's photographic style was inextricably linked to music. This connection is something that Sidibé had spoken about during interviews, over the years.[15]

"We were entering a new era, and people wanted to dance. Music freed us. Suddenly, young men could get close to young women, hold them in their hands. Before, it was not allowed. And everyone wanted to be photographed dancing up close."[4]

It is perhaps no surprise that other Malian artists, such as the musicians Salif Keita and Ali Farka Touré, also came to international attention in the 1990s at almost the same moment as Malian photography was being recognized.[16][17]

"Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, in graphic, vigorous, black-and-white pictures, Sidibé captured the dynamism and joy of a rapidly changing West Africa. In particular, he honed in on the vernaculars of style: the brash suits, the purposefully clashing prints, the girls pairing their headdresses with their cat-eye shades, the little kids in full tribal costume and face paint, the dancers kicking off their shoes. The party, the club, the dance floor—these were his settings, the places where people came to be seen and dressed the part. From midnight till dawn, Sidibé roamed the city, party-hopping, shooting hundreds of frames every weekend."[18]

The Grammy award-winning video of Janet Jackson's 1997 song "Got 'til It's Gone" is strongly indebted to the photographic style of Sidibé,[19] and the video pays tribute to a particular time (during the 1960s and 70s)[20][21] that Sidibé's pictures had helped to document. This was the time period just after the French Sudan (and then the Mali Federation) had gained their Independence from France in 1960.[22] This new era (post-1960) has, subsequently, been characterized by various observers as a post-colonial (and post-apartheid) awakening of consciousness. Many of those who admire Sidibé's work believe that he somehow captured the joy and wonder of this awakening, and that it is seen in the faces, scenes, and images that he helped to illuminate.[15][23][24] More recently, Sidibé's influence can be seen directly through Inna Modja’s 2015 video for her song "Tombouctou,"[3][24] as it was filmed in Sidibé's photography studio.

In 2006, Tigerlily Films made a documentary entitled Dolce Vita Africana about Sidibé, filming him at work in his studio in Bamako, having a reunion with many of his friends (and former photographic subjects) from his younger days, and speaking to him about his work.[25][26]

Sidibé became the first African and the first photographer to be awarded the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Robert Storr, the show’s artistic director, said:

“

No African artist has done more to enhance photography’s stature in the region, contribute to its history, enrich its image archive or increase our awareness of the textures and transformations of African culture in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st than Malick Sidibé.[6]

”

Sidibé died[20] of complications from diabetes[citation needed]. He was survived by at 17 children and three wives.[27]

Malick Sidibe: Photographs. Göteborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center; Göttingen: Steidl, 2003. ISBN 978-3-88243-973-3. With a foreword by Gunilla Knape and an essay by Manthia Diawara, "The 1960s in Bamako: Malick Sidibé and James Brown". Published on the occasion of the exhibition Malick Sidibé: 2003 Hasselblad Award Winner held at the Hasselblad Center, Göteborg, Sweden, 2003.[28]

Bagadadji. Saint-Brieuc, France: GwinZegal, 2008. ISBN 9782952809924. With an essay by Florian Ebner, "La scène de Bagadadji". Portraits of the inhabitants of Bagadadji, Bamako, taken between 1964 and 1976.

English-language version.

French-language version.

German-language version.

Perception. Saint-Brieuc, France: GwinZegal, 2008. ISBN 9782952809955. In French. Studio portraits made in in Britany, France, over the course of three weeks in July 2006.

Malick Sidibé: Au village. Montreuil, France: Éditions de L'Œil, 2011. ISBN 978-2351371329. Text by Brigitte Ollier. Studio portraits taken in Sidibé's native village of Soloba over the course of 50 years. In French.

Malian Portrait Photography. New Platz, New York: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2013. ISBN 9780615510941. Photographs by Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, El Hadj Hamidou Maïga, Abdourahmane Sakaly, and El Hadj Tijani Àdìgún Sitou. With text by Daniel Leers. "Published on the occasion of the exhibition Malian Portrait Photography on display from January 23-April 14, 2013 in the North Gallery of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz."[31]

Malick Sidibé: portrait of the artist as a portraitist (2006). OCLC68907552. Directed by Susan Vogel for the National Museum of Mali / Prince Street Pictures. Produced by Vogel, Samuel Sidbe, and Catherine de Clippel. Interview with Sidibé by Jean-Paul Colleyn. In French with English subtitles.

Malick Sidibé, le Partage (2013, P.O.M. Films; Éditions de L'Œil, ADAV). 52 mins. DVD and brochure. Film by Thomas Glaser, text by Gaël Teicher. ISBN 9782351371558. The film is in French with French and English subtitles, and the text is in French.

Sidibé’s first home was a Peul (Fulani) village. After finishing school in 1952, he trained as a jewelry maker and then studied painting at the École des Artisans Soudanais (now the Institut National des Arts) in Bamako, graduating in 1955. In 1956 he was apprenticed to French photographer Gérard Guillat and began to photograph the street life of Bamako, capturing the spirit of the city’s inhabitants as Mali made the transition from colony to independent country. In particular, Sidibé chronicled the carefree youth culture at dance clubs and parties, at sporting events, and on the banks of (or in) the Niger River. His remarkably intimate shots show exuberant young Africans intoxicated with Western styles in music and fashion.

Although he continued his street work and close association with young Malians for another 20 years, in 1958 Sidibé opened his own commercial studio and camera-repair shop. There he took thousands of portraits, of both individuals and groups, creating dramatic images of subjects eager to assert their postcolonial middle-class identity, often with exaggerated idealized versions of themselves. After 1978 he worked exclusively in his studio.

Sidibé’s work was unknown outside his own country until the early 1990s, when European art critic André Magnin, who was in Bamako to visit another Malian photographer, Seydou Keïta, was taken to Sidibé’s studio by mistake. Magnin began to publicize the photographs of Sidibé, and he published a monograph on the photographer in 1998. There followed an impressive number of group and solo exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 2003 Sidibé received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. He was also awarded the Venice Biennale art exhibition’s Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement; he was the first photographer and the first African to ever receive the honour.

Sidibé’s first home was a Peul (Fulani) village. After finishing school in 1952, he trained as a jewelry maker and then studied painting at the École des Artisans Soudanais (now the Institut National des Arts) in Bamako, graduating in 1955. In 1956, he was apprenticed to French photographer Gérard Guillat and began to photograph the street life of Bamako, capturing the spirit of the city’s inhabitants as Mali made the transition from colony to independent country. In particular, Sidibé chronicled the carefree youth culture at dance clubs and parties, at sporting events, and on the banks of (or in) the Niger River. His remarkably intimate shots show exuberant young Africans intoxicated with Western styles in music and fashion.

Although he continued his street work and close association with young Malians for another 20 years, in 1958 Sidibé opened his own commercial studio and camera-repair shop. There he took thousands of portraits, of both individuals and groups, creating dramatic images of subjects eager to assert their post-colonial middle-class identity, often with exaggerated idealized versions of themselves. After 1978, he worked exclusively in his studio.

Sidibé’s work was unknown outside his own country until the early 1990s, when European art critic André Magnin, who was in Bamako to visit another Malian photographer, Seydou Keita, was taken to Sidibé’s studio by mistake. Magnin began to publicize the photographs of Sidibé, and he published a monograph on the photographer in 1998. There followed an impressive number of group and solo exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 2003 Sidibé received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. He was also awarded the Venice Biennale art exhibition’s Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement; he was the first photographer and the first African to ever receive the honor.